The Cairo Bead Game, by Mark Thompson Rules as for the Glass Bead Challenge, on the board above. My suggestion for handicapping also applies to this variation: one player designates several cells to be permanently Blue, although without influencing ownership of adjacent cells, and the other player then chooses whether to play Red (moving first) or Blue. The example shown does not incorporate such a handicapping rule. Blue leads Red by 22-21. In the illustration I defined cells as “adjacent” only if they shared an edge; the game might also be played defining cells as adjacent if they touch even at a vertex. Or touching at a vertex might confer one-half point toward ownership, but an opposing stone placed in an edge-adjacent cell would take control of the cell. I suspect that might be the best variant I’ve thought of, because a weakness of the game in its present form is that moves only have local effects -- the non-square tesselation adds some complexity to it, but I think it could benefit from still more. An empty board is at the bottom of this page for anyone who would care to print it out and play on; if you play it, please let me know what you think! |
